


Midnight Sun

by catsmiaow



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Vampires, Werewolves, casefic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 09:08:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17404064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catsmiaow/pseuds/catsmiaow
Summary: The supernatural became part of the fabric of life a few decades back, but those ties are becoming strained with murders that only Sherlock Holmes might be able to solve.





	1. The Dead Lady

\---------------  
Watson  
\---------------

It's been one of those night. One of those weeks if truth were to be told.

This has to be the fourth corpse in the past two weeks that I've stood over at the side of Sherlock Holmes. I think the count is up to four. After awhile they all start to blur together. A psychiatrist would probably label that as war trauma or a survival technique from the same. I don't know anymore. All I know is that I'm tired and that this woman looks like the one before.

“What do you see?” Sherlock asks me.

I'll never see all that he does, and we both know it. That doesn't matter, not really, because he sees enough for both of us.

“She looks like the one before,” I answer, trying to press my tired mind into giving up more than that.

“And?” he asks, watching my face. One might mistake that expression on his face for patience, but I know it for what it really is: study. He's studying, watching and piecing together in his head how I'm going from one point to another as if I were a puzzle to be taken apart. It's what he does best, but he puts me back together afterward, so maybe that's okay. Gods, I really am exhausted, aren't I?

“Her head is nearly taken off, only held by a bit of cartilage around the vertebrae. It's the same as the last one,” I add, wiping the moisture from London's never-ending evening drizzle from my face. “And there's a clove of garlic in her mouth.”

He smiles at this, a barely there twitch of his lips upwards that smoothes back out. It's not because he's ashamed or unwilling to show emotion in front of others. Far from it. It's that he doesn't want to encourage me too much without knowing that I've drawn the right conclusion about our Dead Lady.. who really is a Dead Lady in more ways than one. It's hard to tell after true death.

“Why is that?” Sherlock asks.

“Because she's a vampire.”

 

Vampires aren't rare these days, but they are uncommon depending on what circles one moves in. They came out into society full force about thirty years back, and they've faced the same adversity that every group has. GLBT had Stonewall, and the vampires had Pennyworth. I'd like to say it was noble on their part, but it was survival in the end. That year there had been a lot of influenza, and no one thought much about it until people started dying by the hundreds. It wasn't just us either. It was them too. Nothing like an epidemic to draw everyone together. They found the answer first, and humanity embraced them. For awhile. When they started to mainstream, that was when the trouble started. All those Gothic romances didn't seem so great up against the reality of some of them. Who would have guessed that even the Undead have their so-called 'geeks'? Ruined a lot of young girls' dreams.

Long story short, humanity saw all its own ugly sins in the vampires that were coming out of the woodwork so to speak. So the 'good' citizens of Britannia had themselves an old fashioned racial war. It didn't matter anymore than decades or centuries worth of education and thought at Pennyworth Laboratories may have saved lives or the protests for equality that came afterward. None of the 'Warms' (that's what we living are... even says it on my driver's license... nice politically correct term, isn't it?) cared now that the danger was passed and the vaccine had been made. Oh, they shouted about saving the innocent children or protecting the helpless, but vampires didn't care about ravishing anyone. It was the younger of them that drove it all, Dead only a year or so. They missed human life and wanted to go back as much as they could. They wanted to exist. The official death count on the Undead side never was tallied up, another fact swept under the rug in the name of 'peace'. You can bet that the Warms shout about their losses whenever there's a hint of something going pear-shaped.

In the end, it all passed into a grudging acceptance. If history has taught us anything, it's that persistence pays off (usually) despite the bloodshed, and in the case of the vampires, it did. When I served in Afghanistan, there was a vampire regiment there. I helped out their medics a few times and learned more about them than the average Warm does. I learned that they died just like we do, sometimes crying for their mothers or lovers in the throes of agony. Morphine or other painkillers didn't help them. The poor bastards just went on suffering. Cut the jugular and carotid arteries, and they're done for. It just takes them longer to die and they seem to gush blood everywhere as they do. Same with destroying the heart. I felt sorry for a lot of them when it came to massive injuries. A human, excuse me there... a 'Warm'... will up and die or pass out from shock or pain. Them? No, they kept on suffering and screaming, sometimes shredding their own lips to ribbons with those too sharp teeth as they thrashed and keened. The war taught me that the only difference between a vampire (or Dead) and a human (or a Warm) was that vampires didn't shit themselves when they died.

I purposely don't think about them anymore than I do any of those I lost in my unit or the bullet that hit me.

Standing there staring down at the Dead Lady, I could feel the weight pressing down. London was becoming a slowly smoldering fire as winter began to give way to the first stirrings of spring. This was the fourth Dead death, and the vampires were beginning to get uneasy. Not that I blamed them. If Warms had started turning up dead with puncture wounds in the throat (despite that it was a medical fact that vampire bites healed over instantly to avoid exsanguination of the victim... something in their saliva as far as we can tell) there would have been noonday stakings in Trafalgar Square. Met with cheers from the public.

Little did most realize that vampires had been waging war against all manner of forces for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years. They were professionals at it. The only thing they really feared going into an all out war with was the werewolves, and they kept well out of the city of London or any city for that matter. The countryside was theirs, even if no one could ever confirm ever seeing one beyond the vampire tales. I liked to think that they were really out there, running wild and free under the moon, living their lives without the restraints of society that the vampires had chosen to inflict upon themselves.

 

“Very good,” Sherlock murmured as he lightly touched her chin, turning her head to the side as he examined the bit of gristle that was keeping the head attached. “Throat cut in an attempt to take the head off and a clove of garlic in the mouth according to the old myths.”

“Doesn't work,” I said with a small smirk. “Knew a lieutenant that loved the smell of it. Dated a local girl and asked her to eat it for him.”

Sherlock nodded absentmindedly. It was a fact he undoubtedly already knew. I knew that his 'Irregulars' consisted of humans and vampires alike, perhaps other races. There were always whispers. “Ah, Detective Inspector Lestrade. I've been waiting.”

I looked up even if Sherlock didn't. To date, I hadn't met the man that Sherlock spoke of occasionally, only a bit more than his 'arch nemesis'. I couldn't help but blink, and I could feel Sherlock's watchful stare burning into me.

The man that stood before us wasn't extraordinary in any way, shape or form. On the street (a nighttime street) he could have been taken as anyone. His hair was silvered, face worn with too many sleepless nights. His eyes were an unremarkable shade of mud brown. What gave him away was that illusion of burning embers in the pupil whenever he looked at someone just so.

Vampire.

Sherlock was dusting his knees off as he waved carelessly from the Undead man to myself. “Detective Inspector Lestrade, Doctor Watson. Watson, Detective Inspector Lestrade.”

Lestrade nodded only briefly to me before focusing on Sherlock. I was glad that he did. It gave me a chance to look him over.

“Another one?” he asked tiredly.

“Yes.” Sherlock never did bother to sugarcoat things.

As I said, Lestrade was unremarkable on the whole. That 'perfection in death' bit is solely a creature of literature. Go look in the mirror. Take a good hard look at all your physical flaws. Those get carried over into death. Imagine having acne for eternity, a weight problem or any other million flaws we see there. Eternity. It's a long time. When the first rush of Turnings happened, there were a lot of suicides from people who thought they would instantly be the 'beautiful ones'. No such luck.

Lestrade was good looking in his own way, I suppose, but I had already accepted the fact that I was in love, or at least 'lust', with Sherlock Holmes. Even those fire-bright flashes when I least expected in from the depths of Lestrade's eyes couldn't sway me.

“Damn,” Lestrade said with a sigh, crouching down beside her. “I was hoping it wasn't.”

“The natives getting restless?” Sherlock asked, a grim brand of readiness in his eyes. More cases meant less boredom.

One gets used to Sherlock's moral and social impediments after awhile. I was a little surprised to see that Lestrade didn't rise to the bait of those gleaming eyes on Sherlock's part. It's a bit pathetic when the Warm is more eager than the Undead.

“Of course,” Lestrade said quietly, finally looking up to us. Those embers flashed and fell back to a banked fire. He was agitated, a sign I had seen before. “Any leads?”

I pressed my lips together, saying nothing. If I smiled, Sherlock would be on to the game. Sherlock so rarely considered that someone else might be on to his tricks.

“Of course,” Sherlock mimicked Lestrade.

“Good,” the DI said as he rose back to his feet, watching us both steadily. “Donovan said she had an idea on it, and I didn't think she would figure it out before you did. She and Anderson do make a good team though.”

The minute wrinkle of his nose and the grandiose way Sherlock turned away with a flare of his coat said it all. My eyes met Lestrade's for an instant, but it felt like it went on into forever. I had meant to smirk in agreement with his trickery, but it was lost when our eyes met. I had seen and felt this before, the power that some vampires had. Not all of them, mind you. Powers of that sort only seemed to run in various bloodlines, same as shape shifting or the other rarely seen abilities. Those who had those special gifts guarded their bloodlines jealously and refused to pass them on. I blinked and forced it away although I suspected that he 'let' me go instead of pushing. A false wooden smile rose to my lips before I turned away and chased after Sherlock. Warm was better than cold.

That, and I had already seen the unmarked but expensive black car idling at the kerb. It surely wasn't there for Sherlock, myself or any of the other plebs. Mycroft Holmes didn't stoop that low unless Sherlock was trying actively to kill himself.

“Sherlock!” I called out, ignoring the limp that wanted to manifest itself as I followed and didn't think of those I left behind any more than I did those left in the desert sands.

\-------------  
Sherlock  
\-------------

After we left Lestrade, the silence kept with us as we returned to Baker Street. I had no desire for a cab, wanting the space to think. Muggers or the like didn't worry me. With John and his gun at my side coupled to the words passed among my Irregulars, the night didn't hold many fears for me. I was one of the few who would work any side of the fence be it vampires or human, prostitute or prince. It kept me from being bored although I didn't tell them that unless pressed for an answer. I may not have cared what their tiny minds thought, but it did make repeat business difficult.

It was the clove of garlic that stayed with me, remained while the other images faded into background noise. Even without the autopsy snaps in front of me, I could see each clearly. It would be wedged at the back of the tongue, resting against where the soft and hard palate met. There was nothing special about it, the sort anyone could buy at a market despite it not being in season. Garlic was one of those new vogue things that the insipid took to the moment some idol of theirs did. Crosses were making a comeback as well. It wasn't hard to see why.

Four vampires murdered in three weeks, two in this one alone which meant the killer was either building up or had been overtaken by arrogance or a fit of need to kill. The latter seemed unlikely. There was planning in this. It wasn't something that had been done in an uncontrollable urge that couldn't be defeated. All of them were women, killed elsewhere and the bodies dumped in public places where no one had seen them.

One thread led to another to another and so on.

_“Donovan said she had an idea on it, and I didn't think she would figure it out before you did. She and Anderson do make a good team though.”_

Lestrade was never more foolish than when he was trying to be superior. Donovan. As if.

“Sherlock?”

The tone of John's voice told me that he had called my name multiple times.

“What?” I asked, irritation made clear to him. Only John could pick up on those small hints and understand them. I hated being interrupted from my thoughts, needing to think when all others could do was talk, talk, talk. Even if they weren't as brilliant as I was, at least they could do me the service of shutting up so that their betters could think. John, of course, didn't fall into that category of fools. He knew I couldn't articulate my thoughts into all the words other people would understand. Few can grasp what a freefall relief simple understanding is to those who stand outside the 'normal' world. One person who truly understands makes all the difference.

“You're about to walk into traffic,” he said, holding onto my arm.

“Oh. Well. Yes. I was testing the stopping time with the element of surprise.”

That lie wouldn't have convinced a four year old, but it was a skill I was still learning. Sociopaths had little need to lie when the truth got us what we wanted and gave a few seconds of shock that stripped the masks of others away.

“Of course,” John replied, not bothering to comment on what we both knew was true. We had reached that comfortable place where it was unnecessary.

I let myself be steered along, leaving John to worry about my physical being as I fell back into my thoughts. I trusted him as I did not other, something I could never articulate. For all my far-reaching thoughts and complex turns of intelligence, I couldn't say those words. And John didn't expect me to. Even when my sharp tongue turned on him, John shrugged it off. He would get angry, but he was always there despite the occasional eyeballs in the microwave or hedgehogs in the bathtub.

An answer finally occurred to me as dawn was creeping over London in an ugly gray shroud that promised rain, spats already hitting the panes in uneven amounts. It was the clove of garlic, that small piece of vegetable matter that was always out of place and a signature by now. Even the dailies had begun to pick up and publish news of the Dead Slayer or Vampire Killer. Give them a human criminal and they could think of a hundred mildly clever names. Use a vampiric one (and I refused to use the word 'Dead', even in the privacy of my mind) and even those motes of intelligence refused to spark. Typical of the media.

It was that bloody clove.

I drew John against my chest, resting my cheek against his hair as I stared out the window. More droplets were spattering against the glass, still in uneven amounts. Even the rain wasn't reliable.

I thought of Lestrade then, knowing full well where the vampire had gone to when he left us. Right now, he was probably the most secure creature in all of London if not all of Europe, perhaps the world. Mycroft had spared no expense, changed designers at least fifteen times so no one person knew the layout and only Mycroft himself knew the security codes to where Lestrade slept away his daylight hours. Like all vampires, Lestrade was at his most vulnerable when the sun ruled the skies. I should know. I sat there watching him for two weeks straight to fully investigate the vampiric condition. I had pinched, slapped, stabbed (non-lethal, I'll have you know) and even shot Lestrade once. Nothing. Not so much as a twitch. I was beginning to suspect that this was how our killer was getting to his victims. It was the only scenario that made sense.

The speed idea, the one that vampires move faster than humans, was true to a degree. However, it was only a certain bloodline that had that ability, and given that it was one of the more desirable and dangerous ones, the Hillerands kept close tabs on who was part of their line. To date, only ten in all the world were known. Then there was the shapeshifters. Long ago they had probably been something more pedestrian, but now they called their 'family' the Blackmoors. Pretentious idiots. Just because they could turn into birds, bats or in one case, a wolf, at will didn't give them right to make up ridiculous monikers. There were only fourteen of them, mostly in America. Then there were the mentalists that could make others do as they wanted, the Staints line. Only twenty of them roamed the world, although evidence said there were more with their abilities watered down to non-existence. I often suspected Lestrade was of one of those bastard off-shoots, although his line was known to be powerless besides the usual vampiric abilities of not aging and endurance. The last of the big four 'families' were the Castilles, the ones that had minor telekinetic powers. One felt himself superior because he could move a stone weight object a quarter inch. Despite that, only thirty of them existed in various countries. The powerful and 'old' families guarded their bloodlines like biddies did their coins on whist days. Vampires like Lestrade who had a license or those turned illegally were of muddy lines, immortality bought and sold cheaply. One always got what they paid for.

Ridiculous.

But the clove kept coming back.

John murmured against my chest, the syllables tainted with sleep. I couldn't make out what he said, only a word that sounded like 'flutter'.

Then it hit me.

I displaced John and left him tumbling to the floor as I raced across the cold floor of our flat and began pulling books off the shelf. Even as I did so, my mental pace was going faster and had already grabbed the book in my memory to flip pages. My physical hands were slow, only now finding the book I wanted and cracking it open. Pages moved with that ugly whispering sound of secrets in the outer world as my mind re-read in that mental version what was written on the page. I found it in the physical world and traced my fingertip over the words.

**Acherontia styx**   
**Death's Head Moth**

Pages slipped under my hands in the real world even as the ones in my mind stayed still and replayed those words. When I looked down, my fingers marked a new place. John's coming-awake irritation and demand for answers went ignored. All I wanted was input and so I read:

_“He wasn't born a criminal. He was made one through years of systematic abuse. He hates his own identity, you see..”_

No, he wasn't. He couldn't be.

_"What is the first and principal thing he does? What needs does he serve by killing?"_   
_"Anger, um, social acceptance, and, huh, sexual frustrations, sir... "_   
_"No! He covets. That is his nature. And how do we begin to covet? Do we seek out things to covet? Make an effort to answer now."_   
_"No. We just..."_   
_"No. We begin by coveting what we see every day."_

My traitorous mind took it a step further. We not only covet that which we see everyday as that particular literary character would have put it, but we begin by hating that which we are. The book fell from my hands, and I watched it turn over and over in an endless fall even as my mind jumped leaps ahead of anything else. I was standing naked in the middle of our flat in the chill with a few scales of John's semen drying on my thighs, but none of that was felt. If anything, I was too hot. The book fell open. Even with John's hand on my shoulder and his buzzing words in my ear, I focused on the printed words there.

_“What became of your lamb, Clarice?”_   
_“They killed him.”_


	2. In This Darkening Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter starts with an explicit John/Lestrade sex scene. Consider yourself warned.

\------------  
John Watson  
\-------------

I wound my legs around him, drawing him hard against my body. Despite the rumours, I could feel him growing hard as I did. When we kissed, there was no taste of dirt as the legends would have one believe. There was only a hint of iron and heat, something I couldn't fully place. A part of my mind insisted that it had to be blood still left on his tongue and lips. Where his hands caressed my nude body trails of coolness were left, an antithesis to my own heat. When he drew back from our shared kiss, I grew even harder at the embers that flickered through his eyes.

It was a fire banked for me.

Preparations were done, my fingers sliding in and out of his body faster than would have been possible with a human partner, but I wanted him. Oh how I wanted him. When I finally slid into him, it was like being encased in cool silk. It did little to calm my need for him.

Even as my hips jerked in need, I felt his mouth against my throat. The touch of his tongue against the vital artery beneath made me drive harder and deeper into him. It is said that the orgasm is the 'little death', and this made it all the more. Would he stop? Would he care? Did I care while I was using his body as I was?

The answer, in the end, was that I didn't. There were worse deaths to be encountered in the world than this. My hand held tightly in a grip of silvery hairs as I forced his mouth back up to mine for a kiss. It was a sign that he was too far gone when his teeth scored against my lips. I could feel him sucking at the minute wounds he left, but I didn't stop him or feel sick as the popular line of thought said I should have. All I felt was lust and more lust, a wanting beyond anything I had felt before. It increased when our eyes locked, losing myself in those inner fires.

“Do it,” I begged him as I felt myself start to spiral out of control. It was still like being encased in sweet coolness, no heat to it. I kept driving deeper and deeper, or so I thought. I didn't want heat though. I wanted to feel that body writhing around me. As the famous author said, 'if this is death, so be it'. It was irrational that I wanted to spend myself in him, mark him and keep him as my own. He was another's, and so was I.

“Do it,” I said again, too close to hold off now.

When his teeth sank into my throat, there was finally that heat flash-firing through my veins and body. I was helpless to stop my cries or of my body jerking against him as I did mark him as my own in an intimate way that no one else... what foolish fancy was that? Someone else had before. I knew it. That didn't stop me though. I filled him, and he took from me. It was an orgasm that went on and on until I could feel my mind slipping from its mooring. No one could face this and keep breathing. I felt my heart skitter in my chest a bare second before he finally let go of my throat. His tongue was like a cat's, scraping against the now healing wounds to gather up any last drops.

All I could do was moan.

 

“John!”

His eyes stared down sharply into mine as I awoke.

“A nightmare,” I stuttered out, shocked with awakening from what seemed all too real and faced with the first stirrings of guilt. I didn't understand why I felt guilt considering it had been a dream, nothing more than a dream. I couldn't control those.

“Debris of the mind,” Sherlock said, not moving from his looming over me position, each word without inflection or emotion.

I wanted to snap at him to quit studying me like that. I could feel the semen caught against my stomach and on my nightclothes cooling in a sticky mess. Somehow I knew that he knew it as well and was drawing this out to see what I would do. So many things were an experiment to him, even myself. A low part of me had to wonder if Mycroft were the same with his much more interesting specimen. Did Lestrade feel sometimes as I did right now?

“You can tell me, John,” Sherlock said quietly, the warmth of his finger that was stroking my cheek unexpectedly a small shock. Part of me must have still been dreaming since I expected it to be cold.

“Tell you what?”

“Tell me what it is that has your heartbeat so accelerated, your breathing coming in small gasps or what you dreamed,” Sherlock said as if it were the easiest thing in the world. “Your clothing and some of the sheet beneath you is soaked with sweat. You say a nightmare, but you have obviously reached orgasm.”

I opened my mouth to say something but nothing came. What could I say in the face of that? Somehow 'had a wet dream about your brother's bed mate' just didn't roll off the tongue right. “Sherlock!” I finally spat out with exasperation. “It was a nightmare.”

“It wasn't like your Afghanistan dreams or the hospital.”

I wanted out from under his eyes. Something in me finally broke as I scowled up at him. “Fine! I dreamed that I was in bed with Lestrade! Better?”

Something changed in Sherlock's eyes, something I could have called relief broke through the watchful ice of before. Relief? Why that? I had expected something far different. “Oh that. Well, get up and get showered. We're going to Mycroft's.”

“Sherlock...” I began, my fingers seeking his sleeve to try and hold onto him before he bounded off the bed as he clearly meant to. “I-”

That smile that was pleased was still in place, and I was even more confused. I had said what I dreamed about, hadn't I?

“John, Lestrade is a vampire, most likely the first you have seen up-close since the war judging by your reaction. The ones you met there probably weren't good memories. As the Gothic romances and penny-dreadfuls have proved, the vampire is the symbol of repressed sexuality and lust. I could go on to cite numerous other examples in literature, film, folktales and so on. It is more what he is than who he is. Did he bite you in your dream?”

I was flushing against my will. Who else has their wet dream picked apart to elemental levels than me? Sherlock had no comprehension of shame. “Yes.”

“There you have it. Come on. I don't want to be late.”

Information was still spinning around my head as my short-lived pleasure at the dream had been sapped away. A hot shower sounded wonderful. “Why are we going to Mycroft's? Is this related to the case?”

Sherlock had given up trying to talk to me and was now physically hauling me out of bed and pushing my sleep stupid body towards the bath. “Of course it is. I wouldn't bear his presence otherwise. I need to observe Lestrade for awhile.”

I yelped loudly as the water was turned on and I was thrust unwittingly and unwillingly into an ice cold spray. Dark glares and protests of freezing to death did little to improve my situation. Our flat may be wonderful in many ways, but it takes awhile for the hot water to work itself up the pipes. One could tell the moment when it finally did as my yelps and complaints turned to a full out shout.

“John,” Sherlock sighed out with a much put upon suffering look to me that said he fully believed he was the only intelligent person in the room, “first you complain of the cold. Now it's too hot. You need to make up my mind for me.”

I responded loudly, driving him out of the room.

“If that's the sort of language you use on your blog, no wonder my website attracts more visitors.”

It was going to be a long night.

 

\------------  
The Killer  
\-------------

They've called Sherlock bloody Holmes in.

Figures they can't handle it themselves. I reckon that leech leading the Murder squad can't find his own arse with two hands and a road map according to what I've seen at the scenes. I was behind him... behind that leech once, the stake in my pocket held so tight I had bruises the next day. Fuck, so close. I could have rammed it right through his spine and into that rot-stuffed heart. I was weak then, but I'm not now.

There's too many books, too many words. They're all around me, pressing me until everything stinks of the bugs that squirm between the pages.

I have to open a new one now. I'm sure fucking Holmes will smell them on me. It was like them, all dust and age and squirmy things. Until then, I'll kill as many of them as I can. Maybe Holmes will understand. They talk about him on break sometimes, about how he knows everything.

He could help me, see the light. 

Maybe I should speak to him.

Soon.

\------------  
John Watson  
\-------------

Dinner was every bit as uncomfortable as I thought it would be. My only comfort was that Detective Inspector Lestrade wasn't there. That didn't stop Sherlock from giving the conversation opener to Mycroft Holmes that I had experienced a dream about his lover. Mortification paralysed me.

“Oh?” Mycroft asked blandly as he used the tines of his fork to turn over a water chestnut. The delicate wrinkle of his nose at the bit of food would have sent a waiter scurrying for the kitchen.

“Indeed.”

“Jealousy doesn't become you,” Mycroft replied, nudging aside the offending bit of vegetable. “You truly must find a better place for takeout, Sherlock. Some of this looks to be two or three days old.”

The subject was forgotten to my relief as Sherlock began studying his own plate to compare to Mycroft's and defend the reputation of the place he bought from.

Gregory Lestrade made no announcement of his presence as he arrived, hanging up his coat and stripping off his tie as he climbed the few stairs to where we were having after dinner drinks. Well, I was having an after dinner drink. Sherlock and his brother were debating still about that bit of water chestnut being over a few hours old. Sherlock was threatening to go home and get his microscope to prove so if necessary. After listening to them for the past hour, I was beginning to suspect that Mycroft was leading Sherlock on and enjoying himself mightily.

“Gregory, come join us,” Mycroft said amicably.

I couldn't help but take a good look at him, to see those flickering lights again in the pupils of his eyes. They were there just as I remembered. There had to be something to what Sherlock had said with the vampire being the symbol of repressed sexuality or something like that. I exchanged a suffering look with Lestrade as the Holmes brothers picked right back up where they had been.

“What are they arguing about?” Lestrade asked, leaning over to me.

I could smell some sort of cologne on him, a musky whiff to it with spices that reminded me of secrets. Odd since I thought most scents were heat activated. There was a blush to his skin, true enough, one I had seen before from a vampire having newly fed. I startled and remembered we had been speaking. “Mycroft found a water chestnut in his supper that wasn't up to his standards.”

“It wasn't Tan's, was it?” Lestrade asked, whispering to me still as the brothers ignored the pair of us.

I nodded. “Down by King's Cross.”

When Lestrade... Gregory... grinned with real amusement, I could see the sharpened points of his incisors. “Anthea orders all of Mycroft's from there. He swears by the place.”

I had suspected that despite appearances, Sherlock and Mycroft were probably listening very closely to us. I was proved right when Sherlock seized on this low-spoken bit of information and proceeded to throw it in Mycroft's face. Gregory and I were reduced to quiet laughter, trying our best to hide it in the face of Mycroft's quiet matron aunt moue of disapproval and Sherlock smirking good cheer.

“What is it you want, Sherlock?” Mycroft bluntly asked.

“I want to observe Lestrade sleeping. I have a theory, but I need to test it.”

I could see the idea immediately sat ill with Mycroft, the man's lips pinching in with a restrained frown and his eyes losing what warmth they had.

“How will this help?” Lestrade asked.

Again, I had to marvel at Mycroft's restraint compared to Sherlock's. Mycroft picked up his wineglass and took a small sip, letting this decision be Gregory's own. I realized for the first time that there was a respect between them, a reliance that didn't let one overrule the other. Or that could have been because we were there that Mycroft was holding his tongue. Having been kidnapped by Mycroft, I had the feeling that he would have tried a great deal if the odds had been on him getting away with it. Sherlock claimed he was a sociopath, and I believed Mycroft was the same, only quieter about it.

“The killer is trapping his victims somehow. My first theory is that he's kidnapping them during the day while they're sleeping,” Sherlock said.

Those pinched lines around Mycroft's mouth became tighter as his lips thinned down to a line.

Sherlock didn't see or didn't care, plunging on. “I want to observe Lestrade sleeping and try to see what awakens or stirs him.”

Lestrade's face was thoughtful as he nodded slowly. I may have been the only person in the room that appreciated the social implications of the position he was in. The vampire and human factions might well go into street fights in time if these murders kept up. The humans wouldn't be a match for the vampires under the cover of darkness, but during the day, that would be another matter. There was a civil war brewing on London's streets, just waiting for when the vampires grew tired of waiting for justice. It was probably only that Lestrade was one of them that they were holding off this long.

“Mycroft has to be there,” Lestrade said shortly. The colour was leaving his face. I glanced at the clock, and I saw that it was fast creeping towards the hour of dawn. I hadn't realized that much time had sped past us.

Mycroft nodded in agreement, glancing over at his lover.

Strange how they seemed little more than friends in public. Had Sherlock not told me and I not see the car waiting for Gregory that one night, I wouldn't have guessed it. Even now, I would have believed them friends perhaps, but nothing more until their eyes met. Then... then it was clear if one caught that second or two shared gaze. I felt as guilty for my dream as I would have if I had been dreaming of some happily married woman.

“Why?” Sherlock demanded.

“Because I don't think you know vampires well enough,” Lestrade said. “I would like your Doctor Watson there as well. I've read that he served with some of the vampire units in Afghanistan. He'll know the dangers. I don't think you're right, but if there's the least chance you could be, I want to see what you can do. We did this once before, if you remember, and you said I slept through it. What has changed since then?”

Sherlock said nothing at first, only shook his head. I, and perhaps Mycroft, may have been the only ones suspecting that Sherlock was searching for the right words to say that might put Lestrade at ease. “I have new information.”

“Very well then,” Lestrade said with a slow nod. He seemed all too willing to put his well-being on the line to stop this, to help. And he was one of the 'monsters' that the living said were trying to sacrifice their newborns or preying on their daughters.

“I don't know how much help I can be.” All their eyes turned to me, but my own kept straying back to those dark ones with fires in their pits. “We were kept away from the vampiric units during the days. They were supposedly dangerous even asleep. Sherlock told me about his, well, experiments already on you.”

The line of Mycroft's lips drew down again, starting to turn towards a polite snarl. How was it polite? I'm not sure, but I couldn't imagine Mycroft even intimidating rudely.

“As I said, I have new information.” With an airy wave of his hand, Sherlock calmly dismissed all our protests.

I could feel that we were set on this course for good or ill. Everything in me kept screaming that this was wrong, so very wrong. When being pushed by a storm in a poor sailboat, all one can do is try to hold on and steer. Being around Sherlock was often like that.

We left the table, heading down a pair of hidden stairs. I had never seen so many cipher locks or print readers to get into a chamber. As we passed through each door, Mycroft or Lestrade carefully locked it behind us. At the end, we were in what looked like a lush bedroom in shades of crimson, red, purple and gold.

Sherlock looked positively gleeful.

I still felt positively ill.

**Author's Note:**

> Repost and continuation. Please remember this was written years ago, and I've tried to clean up the errors.


End file.
